(Photo by Michael Fischer) Marvin Somers demonstrates a basic skating maneuver at the local skating rink. Somers began skating as a youth and worked at various skating rinks around the area as an adult.

His eyes gain a twinkle as he finds the whistle in the metal case carrying them, slides it between his lips and blows.

"It still works," he exclaims with glee.

Even though the Spencer man has not worn the Chicago precision roller skates, his fourth pair, for a decade, Somers excitement grows as he recalls days gone by, when roller skating in area rinks was the norm.

Somers, who began skating in 1939 and continued to skate regularly through 1986, estimates he skated at least four nights a week for 47 years, 30 of which he skated seven nights a week while serving as a floor manager in skating rinks throughout Spencer and Arnolds Park.

"It's something that came natural. I enjoyed it and I enjoyed working with kids, the same as when I was coaching little league baseball from 1964 until 1986," he recalled. "To me, roller skating is something that I never get tired of. It's good exercise and good fun. I met a lot of different people while roller skating -- especially when the rink was open up there in the summertime."

As a child, Somers began roller skating with metal-wheeled skates on the sidewalk near his Melvin home. The summer of his freshman year, after his family moved from Milford to Okoboji, Somers' friend, Robert Painter, asked if he might be interested in working along with him as a "skate boy" at Dreamland Roller Rink in Arnolds Park.

"Back in those days, people didn't have shoe skates. We put on clamp skates," he reminisced. "We'd sit on a little skate box ... and they'd put their foot on the skate and we'd tighten up the clamps and put the strap with a pad on it around their ankles."

Among their duties, Painter and Somers were responsible for sweeping the skating rink's wooden floor with wet sawdust. When the 70-by-100-foot floor was not filled with skaters, the two were allowed to put skates on themselves. Six months into his employment at Dreamland, Somers' skating abilities had blossomed -- he could now spin and twirl on roller skates -- and his passion for skating had flourished.

"After I'd been there a while, I had gotten to do a lot of skating, and learned a lot of things from different people who came in. I got to where I was pretty good," he said.

The high school teenager also bought his first pair of white shoe skates then. They sported wooden precision wheels.

After working at Dreamland his freshman, sophomore and junior years, Somers graduated in 1943 and joined the U.S. Navy on Jan. 1, 1944. Following a leave from boot camp in Farragut, Idaho, Somers took his roller skates back with him as he attended radio school.

"Most of the fellows went to Spokane, Wash., which was our closest real big town to Farragut, to drink and do things like that; I went to the roller skating rink. I roller skated in Spokane, San Diego, San Francisco and the Hawaiian islands," Somers recalled of how he spent down time during his military career. "I didn't get to take my skates with me in Hawaii, because they really didn't have any skating rinks over there. They took blacktop and mixed concrete with it, heated it and got it real hot, like they do blacktopping here, then rolled it out on the ground. I used skates that they had there, which were the old skates with the metal wheels. ... After that, I went overseas and came back from Okinawa and was discharged in 1946."

The World War II veteran married Shirley, his first wife, in 1951. Somers worked as a carpenter during the day and began as floor manager of the former Trianon Roller Rink, which was located one block off Grand Avenue on First Avenue East in Spencer, for the late Chuck and Margaret Brown in September 1951. The roller rink job filled his nights and weekends.

"I kept the crowd under control -- fights, fast skating and just horsing around in general -- and I had to play records when the organist wasn't there. We had several organists: There was one from Sioux City named Deanna Days and Janet (Baish) Murphy from the area."

The man who never enrolled in dance or skating lessons himself, began teaching others how to two-step, waltz, tango and fox trot on roller skates.

"One of the favorite skates was the Grand March," Somers said. "The kids would pick partners and we'd get them lined up. I would go to the other end of they floor, and when they came down, they would separate: Boys would go one way and girls would go the other. They'd join up again and come back down through."

Somers and his wife were known to pick up kids in their car and take them to the roller rink with them. Their three sons were among the young local skaters: "I started my oldest boy, Dennis, skating at 18 months. He got to be a pretty good skater. ... Greg, our middle boy, also did some skating. I didn't start him out as young as Dennis, though, because he wasn't really interested in it. Jeff came along and skated also. We all skated: My (late) wife (Shirley) skated, and (my wife) Pam and I both skate today."

During the four years that Somers worked as a floor manager for the Browns, he competed with a friend, Elwood Jones, in the Iowa Great Lakes Roller Skating and the Midwest Roller Skating championships. The Spencer skating duo were awarded gold medals in the team-act category during both, which were held in 1954.

"We had a girl skating with us," Somers recalled of the team acts he and Jones performed. "She'd put her feet on each of our arms and we'd spin. I did get her finally where she could put her feet up around my neck and lock them. I'd let loose with my hands and we'd spin around in a circle with her locked around my head with her feet."

"Where I got my satisfaction was being able to teach somebody else to do something," Somers said of the women from Lake Park and Milford who accompanied them during these competitions.

By the summer of 1955, Chuck Brown managed the Majestic Roller Rink in Arnolds Park during the summertime, and his wife, Margaret Brown, ran the Trianon in Spencer during the fall and winter. Somers worked at the Majestic for a short time before being asked to run the Dreamland Roller Rink in Arnolds Park for Vern Zurn that summer.

The Dreamland rink sported a Wurlitzer jukebox. The cloth-roofed building was located on the northeast corner of the Arnolds Park amusement park's boardwalk.

"The building didn't have any glass windows in it; it had wire on the outside with panels that you could raise up and lock in. We had to put those up and take them down every day. They were heavy; it took two guys to do it. And the building had one of those big, old coal furnaces. That's what it was heated with in the wintertime. It also had a concession stand in one corner and doors that we raised up on the inside with ropes. We'd let them down and locked them at night. The Dreamland building, which had no glass in it, had a nice rink. It had a wood floor -- probably one of the best wood floors around in the country at that time," Somers said with a faraway look in his eye. "People skated there in the summertime and danced there on Saturday nights. We opened it up for skating on Fridays and Sundays. ... They shut the rink down that fall and sold the skates to Chuck (Brown). It sat empty, except for dancing. They danced up there in the wintertime, which is when it caught fire and burned down in 1956."

Next, Somers took over as floor manager for the late Darrel Hein, a professional roller skater the Browns had sold the Majestic and Trianon skating rinks to. It was during his employment with Hein that Somers bought his current pair of black precision skates he rolls on today.

"We had adult night on Tuesday nights and open skating the rest of the time," he recalled. "I worked Sunday afternoons and seven nights a week. I worked for him for 14 years, until 1986. In the wintertime, we skated down here (in Spencer) and in the summertime, we skated up there (in Arnolds Park). ... The worst thing they did was when (Chuck Long of Sioux City) cut the rink out up there (in 1989) and made it into a dance hall. ... As far as I'm concerned, the (former skating rink) was the draw of the park."

Shortly after the Arnolds Park skating rink was closed in 1986, Somers continued for a brief time as the floor manager of Dream World Skating in Spencer.

"I really didn't like the floor," he admitted. "It was concrete, and there's nothing like skating on wood. I gave skating lessons down there mostly."

As Somers pulled his latest pair of roller skates from their metal carrying case late last week, he recalled buying them for about $150 years ago.

"You see the junk on the wheels," he asked. "The last time Pam and I skated, we were at the Sioux Falls rink. They let the kids come in there with their roller blades on, right off the street. The floor was so filthy you couldn't even skate. ... If they would treat them like we treated our skates -- don't put them on until you come to the rink -- then it wouldn't be that way."

But the 82-year-old acknowledged he'd still like to try a pair of today's inline skates.